Redesign Thoughts

I’m tempted to just let the redesign be a surprise, but it seems silly to deprive myself of the wisdom of people who actually know something about design, if there are any of you out there. So, below the fold (for those of you who prefer surprises) a very, very rough/tentative mockup of what the new look of the blog might be. I don’t need specific comments at this stage, since I guarantee that the final product will look quite different—this is just something I tossed together as a quick-and-dirty outline.

Update: Made some minor modifications for legibility. Still trying out various looks, so don’t panic if you hate this one.

Update II: Never mind. It’s obviously a bit silly to ask for comments at this stage of the process, and at the level of generality I was going for. Rest assured that none of the things people actually find awful about the mockup ever had any risk of making it into a real layout.

13 responses so far ↓

Remember: people come here for the content. They come for your words. Your overriding priority should be to make it as easy as possible to consume the words. Dark text on a dark background: harder to read. Goofy hand images rather than the more familiar “previous” and “next” text links: harder to navigate. Large, aren’t-I-clever banner image and title that push the actual content halfway down the page: obscures the words people came for.

Your guiding design principle should be: get out of the way. Nobody who visits your site cares about the design or particularly wants to think about it. They just want to read what you write. Don’t get in their way.

Sorry if this is harsh. I’m a big fan. But this design seems like a big step backwards.

How about this: make super-cool, interesting, faux-antique masthead, even creating new ones when the artistic impulse comes over you (a la Dooce), but keep the content clean. The beauty of the blog format is that it enables readers to assimilate your thoughts quickly by following fairly standard formatting conventions and using sans-serif fonts (easier to read on a screen).

On the other hand, probably almost everyone reads you by RSS anyway, but a difficult-to-read blog format risks alienating first-time visitors who are insufficiently patient.